Pepper Sauce
by WC Pemm
Summary: "How—how long do rattlesnakes take to kill a guy?" I asked eventually, casual, like I didn't have no stake in the answer.


Miss Pauling? Miss Pauling. Where do I even start with Miss Pauling? Damn. _Damn, _that's where I start_._

Look, you ever seen a lady

1. Get her purse nabbed by some mook off the bench while she's ice-skating,  
2. Pull off one skate while keeping her balance, and  
3. Nail a moving target right in the head from twenty yards?

That's the kinda lady we're talking about here with Miss P. I was _there_ for that one, I saw it happen and I still don't hardly believe it. And that was just some mook. That was nothing, really.

Nah, listen, I got a better story, I know what's a better story. There was this one time maybe a year, year and a half after I joined the team, right? Over in Hightower, I remember on account of we literally couldn't get Sniper down out of the tower that trip. The guy got drunk and climbed up there and started hooting like an owl _all frickin night_. Australians.

But anyway it was Hightower, and it was spring so all the flowers were coming up, spring in the Badlands is real pretty. You look out your window and bam, yellow and red and purple everywhere, lots of scrubby hardy little plants, way different from Boston. So it was our day off, right, getting pretty close to nightfall, and I was just outside hitting rocks and stuff into RED's side of things for kicks, you know. There I was, just about to do some beautiful window-smashing, when what do I hear but—

"You're incredibly lucky that willful property damage is covered by your contract."

I swung around on my heel and there she was, Miss Pauling, with a water bottle and her hair up. She looked real good against all the flowers with the sunset behind her, let me tell you, purple blouse and real dark jeans and boots because she got the good sense to dress for being out in the desert. I gave her my best grin (which is any of my grins) and leaned on my bat, all casual-like. "Hey, y'know. Just makin' sure those jerks know what's what, gotta keep 'em in line. How you doin', sweetheart?"

"Mm," she said. "We're having a team meeting in about twenty minutes, you'll need to be there. Up in the loft. You haven't seen Pyro, have you? I can't find him."

"Pyro, who needs Pyro, guy never pays attention at meetings anyway." I slung my bat over my shoulder and shrugged. "I dunno, you asked Hardhat?"

"He doesn't know, either." She shook her head and looked around the big basin that Hightower's in. I admired the view. "I wonder if he's in the mineshafts again. I guess I'll go look."

"Mineshafts, what, we got mineshafts around here? I ain't ever seen no mineshafts."

"Why else do you we have a base here at all?" she said, walking off.

Well, I wasn't letting her go down no spooky mines all by herself, so I stuffed my bat into my bag and tagged along. I know she appreciated it. Miss P she don't do a lot of talking but I can just read people like that.

The mineshafts wound up being smack underneath the buildings, sort of tucked away behind everything else. Didn't look like nobody'd used them in ages, but there were lights all the way down. Not my idea of a party, though. I must've stepped over five or six rattlesnakes on our way down. It was cramped, too, and just got narrower the further down we went, especially once the minecart tracks disappeared. If it hadn't been for that and for the snakes and all it might've been a pretty nice atmosphere, all isolated, a little romantic with the tiny lights strung all the way through it. I didn't ever go on none of them "Tunnel of Love" rides like what they got at the state fair, but I bet they couldn't hold a candle to this. Definitely an impromptu date. I slicked my hair back, but Miss P never did end up turning around to see.

I ain't sure how long we were down there but it was a while. We chatted the whole way down—well I guess I mostly did the chatting, that's usually how things turn out 'cause people just get blown away by how great I am so I gotta talk for both sides of us, it's a curse. Eventually we were so far in and we'd taken so many twists and turns in those tiny-ass tunels that I realized I had no idea how far away from the surface we was. I ain't no scaredy cat and I wasn't scared then neither, but a guy likes to know his escape routes, especially in somewhere that's both full of snakes and could cave in on him if it decided it felt like it. "Man, Pyro ain't here. He's probably blowin' bubbles up in the tower. Where's, uh, I mean my sense'a direction is perfect but if you got turned around some, if you was feelin' lost I'd understand—"

"I've been marking our path," she said, unscrewing the lid off her water bottle and taking a drink. "You're not claustrophobic, are you?"

"Naw, it's just, I mean there's an awful lotta snakes down here. Don't want you to get bit, I mean you ain't even patched into respawn are you?"

She laughed, and man you ain't lived 'til you've heard Miss P laughing. It's not squawky or nothing like some girls do, just real soft, and she don't laugh often. That laugh was just for me. Or at me. Sometimes you gotta take what you can get, though, and I wasn't gonna complain either way. "I patch myself in before you guys even get here. It's not worth the risk."

"Oh, huh. I mean, that's smart, yeah. I getcha, they're all lunatics, once I saw Soldier an' Demo, they stuck about ten stickybombs onto a rocket an'—"

And that's when the lights, all of them, flickered, then died.

In the darkness, I heard Miss P sigh. "Great."

Now, normally? You tell me I'm gonna be all alone in the dark with Miss P, that sounds like the perfect evening to me. But here we were stuck in a tiny little tunnel full of who-the-hell-knew, and that kind of put a damper on things. What a waste. "This uh, this ain't s'posed to be happenin', is it?"

"No, it's not." I heard her moving a little. "Shoot, where're the bulbs?"

Meanwhile I was reaching around in my pocket for my lighter. Couldn't remember if I had brought the thing. I didn't usually unless I was planning on getting a smoke in—that was something else real handy about respawn and Medic's healy stuff, smokes can't touch you. I didn't ever smoke until I joined BLU, and I still don't smoke unless I don't got respawn looking out for my lungs.

Nothing in my left pocket, so I tried my right. My fingers hit something rusty and cold. Jackpot. I flicked the lighter on. "Tadah!"

It didn't brighten things up much, but it was a hell of a lot better than nothing. I could just make out Miss P's face, blinking behind those cute glasses. "That's handy," she said, impressed, _definitely _impressed. Score. "Here, bring it over here. We should be able to follow the wires out—how long will that burn?"

"I dunno, a while? I filled it up before we came, I ain't used it much, it oughta be okay."

I didn't keep it on the whole time anyway just in case, since Miss P pointed out we wouldn't need it except at crossroads. She was right, of course, she hits the nail on the head way more than she doesn't. Just about the smartest lady I've ever met. Me, though, I was thinking about all those snakes we'd stepped over. Getting bit wouldn't be the end of the world what with respawn and all, but I didn't have any of my guns on me and I figured she didn't neither so it would've been a real nasty death for someone.

I ain't never been bit by a rattlesnake, but some of the other guys have since this is New Mexico and we're all out running around all day and when you're dodging bullets you ain't looking to see if you're about to step on a snake. First time I remember it happened it was Heavy that got bit. Guy's so big he didn't even notice until we got off work and his leg gave out. Well we all go and see because Heavy doesn't just fall over like that and he's pulled up his pant leg and there it is, the nastiest goddamn thing. It'd gone all yellow and red and had puffed up to about twice the size of the other calf, and some of the skin was peeling away and going black around the edges. Engineer said it was a rattler bite, and not even a bad one really. We got it fixed it up easy, no problem with the mediguns, but let me tell you I was _not_ interested in seeing how it feels. I ain't Medic, I don't go offing myself in weird ways for science or whatever.

So we did that for a while. I stuck close because hey, it was dark, got wild animals around, a couple nights ago I had heard some cougar screaming real close by. You ever hear a cougar scream? Sounds exactly like a woman. It ain't what you expect, middle of the night in the desert. Didn't spook me, I mean, I only fell out of bed because Spy was snoring his ass off again and I was trying to wake him up without smacking him with nothing. What I mean is, anyway, nothing saying the cat couldn't be in the mines. Could've been in the mines, could've been anywhere.

Anyway, like I said I stuck close. It was a great idea, not that all of my ideas ain't great. Miss P doesn't wear perfume or nothing, turned out, but I caught a whiff of whatever shampoo she used. Mint or something, I don't know all them fancy girl scents, but it was damn fine, just like her. Eventually, she said, "So much for the meeting, I guess."

"Aw, I bet half of em forgot already without me and you to keep 'em in line. What was it about anyway, is Mann Co. gonna stop catapulting crates at us in the middle of our rounds? How do they even do that?"

"No, they're actually going to start doing that more frequently. Turn the lighter on." I did. Miss P picked one of the three passages in front of us. "It's just some notices from the Administrator, mostly. Conduct and things. The last two TV messengers she sent got killed, so I'm doing it this time."

"Oh yeah that, them, yeah that was all Spy, psychopath, the first one anyway, I think Medic got to the other one, he was all in pieces in the cellar before anyone found him. Y'know, just between you an' me I think the guy's a quack."

"I'll keep that in mind," she said. I am telling you, I was flooring her.

We took another left a couple minutes later and finally there was light seeping in from up ahead. It was real faint, but it was there. We'd been down in those mines long enough the sun had set.

"Hey, whaddya know!" I trotted up ahead, I needed me some air that hadn't been trapped underground for ages. "Look, we made it!"

She huffed a little laugh, tucking back some hair that had fallen out of her bun. "Yes, we sure did. I'm awfully glad you had that lighter."

"Hey, you know me, always prepared, I put them Boy Scouts to shame." I turned the corner and there it was, big old Badlands desert with that great big sky and a million stars overhead. Back home if you want stars you got to go way out of the city, but here? Stars every night. "So hey, hey, since like obviously there ain't gonna be no meeting after all, I mean when I rode up with Sniper we went by this pizza place and it's way past dinner so do you maybe…"

As Miss P came up out of the mines behind me two things happened. First one was I realized we weren't at Hightower. Ahead of us there was just a huge, black plateau, nothing but dirt and plants and a couple blacker shapes on the horizon that must've been mountains. In one direction I could see lights, but they were just little specks in the distance, a few miles off.

I turned all the way around, looking for landmarks. The place was called Hightower for a reason, we'd only been down in the mines for—well I don't know, a while, but we couldn't have gotten that far off. But even if the damn thing had been right next to us I don't know that I would've seen it, on account of the dark.

And as I was doing that, as I was taking the last step that would've put me back facing where I started, my cleats came down on something soft. Not squishy soft, not like a sponge or something, but it had enough give that it made me lose my balance for a second. I picked my foot right back up and got away from it real quick, but not before the whatever-it-was down there moved. Next thing I know my leg hurts and the dry grass started rustling as the something slithered away.

"Scout?"

"No, nope, shit, Miss Pauling, get, no c'mon come over here, get over this way, somethin' just bit me."

I kind of pushed her over a ways, and that's when the sound started, a loud, persistent buzz. Miss P put it together quick. "Is that a rattlesnake? Is—oh, shit." She grabbed my arm, she's got one hell of a grip, got me stopped just like that, "Quit moving. Where did it bite you?"

"Uh just, down on my left leg, back of the calf kinda, it's okay, it don't even hurt any." It hurt. It hurt like a bad bee sting and it was getting worse, but I didn't need to let her know that.

"Give me your lighter." I did, and a second later she'd pulled my sock down (heeeey) and was looking for the bite by the firelight. "Shit," I heard her whisper.

"Aw c'mon, it can't be that bad. I been through way worse anyway, no biggie, I mean I ever tell you about the time—"

"Scout," she said, serious in a way I ain't ever heard her sound before, dead serious, "I don't know where we are. I don't know how far from the base we are, and that means I have absolutely no idea if respawn has us right now."

I'd had something else ready to say before she interrupted me but by the time she finished talking it had kind of crawled back down my throat, straight into my gut, and started flopping around like a fish. I swallowed and my mouth had gone all dry. "…So, uh. So I guess that means pizza's out."

In the dark I heard a long, long sigh.

* * *

Miss P fixed me up as best as she knew how, which was good, because I'm gonna be honest here, I don't know nothing about treating snakebites. First thing she did was get me to take off the sock on that leg but keep the shoe on, and then she pulled off my hand wraps, something about circulation. If my leg hadn't been turning into my own personal circle of hell at the time I would've enjoyed it a lot more, what with her fingers on my wrists and all.

The way it went she got them off me and used one to make a kind of tourniquet above where the scaly little bastard tagged me. Then she made me give her my bag with the bat and all still in it because I guess when you're dealing with venom you want to take it easy as you can. I let her, I mean kinda let her take point for the whole thing, because like I said, no idea here with the snake, one of the very few things I have no clue how to handle. Besides that, what all she'd said about us being past respawn, it kind of—well, it was kind of hard not to think about.

We started heading toward the lights, because it was either them or going back down into the tunnels and I don't think either one of us felt much like doing that. Miss P said you ain't supposed to move when you've been bit, but obviously we didn't have no other choices. If it had been her got bit then hell it would've been easy, I could've picked her up no problem and ran right over to them lights, but I wasn't going to be doing no running on that leg until I got myself through respawn again.

As it went it only took about twenty minutes before I started really limping. When Miss P noticed she had me lean on her shoulder some to take the weight off it. I was getting everything I ever wanted tonight and I was in too much pain to enjoy it, how's that for a load of crap?

We went along a little longer, mostly in silence, because truth be told I was having to chew my tongue right up to keep myself from cussing the air blue over how bad it hurt. I try not to do too much cussing in front of ladies, it's crass and lowbrow my ma would tell us, nevermind that she could swear even better than my third-oldest brother when it came to sports. Once or twice I heard that freaky scream in the distance, the cougar again, but it sounded pretty far off. Eventually Miss P said: "I can't believe I got us lost." There was this awful little lilt in her voice, not really a waver but probably second cousin to one.

"Wh—? Oh. Oh you, well. I mean, the lights goin' out like that, you couldn'ta known, nobody saw that coming."

"I thought I took the right turns back, though. I was so sure—" She shook her head, shifting my arm on her shoulder a little. "I'm afraid this is my fault. I'm sorry, Scout."

I didn't really know what all to say to that.

* * *

Once a couple years ago I had to spend the night in a train yard. I ain't no wuss, sleeping outside's no big deal, but this particular train yard it was a territory of one of the biggest, nastiest street gangs in Southie, the Dodgers. You don't want to get on the Dodgers' bad side on the best days, but my brothers had worked over some of them real good a few weeks beforehand and tonight they were out for blood.

Long and short of it is there was a big damn fight on, a couple of gangs all mad about something different. Us, we weren't mad about nothing, we just wanted in on the fun. But either way I'd got separated from everyone else and to kick it off I was bleeding in a couple spots and I had fractured something in my hand on somebody's face. I'd left my bat behind me in an alley somewhere, too, and it'd already been dark a while so I wasn't real sure where I was. Sitting duck if you'd ever seen one, not gonna lie, and I was not keen on the idea of getting caught with my shorts down like that.

I was just trying to get back home at that point, being way out of commission and all, and the train yard was a shortcut that would've saved me a good twenty-minute walk. Now everyone knew you didn't go in that damn train yard unless you were a train or a Dodger, but that kind of thing don't stop me. I hopped the fence, figuring I could sneak through or at worst just outrun everyone.

Wouldn't you damn well know it, I screw up the landing and twist my ankle.

Boom, couldn't walk. Hurt bad enough I didn't even want to try, but I could hear people talking pretty close by, coming to see what the noise was, and I didn't want to find out if they were on my side or not. I wound up dragging myself under an old tanker car. I cut myself up on the tracks pretty good and the car I was under must have been full of diesel or something because the smell got so bad I wanted to puke after about ten minutes. This was in October, too, so it was damn cold even in daylight and I was wearing jeans and a windbreaker, but I didn't have much choice so I hunkered down and waited and wondered if I was going to see the sun rise.

That night was nothing compared to going through the desert with Miss P with all that venom in me. A twisted ankle is one thing, but after about an hour of walking my calf had swollen up so bad I don't know if I could have wrapped both hands around it. And the pain? Haha. Buddy, I get shot and exploded and beheaded a dozen times a day, and that was all peanuts compared to walking on that leg for an hour.

There weren't no distractions, either. Nothing happens in the desert at night, and neither of us was saying much, and all we could do was go step by step toward those lights. I had a nice, long, quiet stretch of time to think about how I might actually, permanently die because of this—and about how Miss P might, too, if we ran into another one of those snakes. Or something worse.

"I, Miss Pauling, hey I—I gotta sit down a minute," I said eventually. My voice cracked and it was not attractive. So much for stoic hero.

She stopped and glanced at me, then at my leg, though you couldn't really see that far down with the dark. "…Alright," she said after a second, and helped kind of lower me to the ground. I wound up sitting on something sort of spiny, but getting off it would have meant trying to move my leg and I just wasn't up to that right now.

"This is humiliatin'," I said, rubbing at my eyes. "God. Miss P, if I die for real, you gotta tell my ma I went out doin' somethin' way more impressive than this, you gotta promise me that."

"Don't talk like that, okay?" I heard her sigh and fuss with her clothes some. After a second or two she dug her water bottle out of my bag and gave it to me. I sucked it down. "How do you feel?"

"What? Oh, oh you know, it's fine, it ain't—"

"Scout."

"…It, uh. It, it hurts pretty damn bad."

"Are you going to be able to walk the rest of the way?"

All business, that's her. "'Course I am, I just, I gotta get my second wind is all." What I was actually doing is wondering if Miss P was strong enough to knock me out with my bat so I wouldn't have to be dealing with the pain, and I might have asked her to if it weren't for the fact she would've had to drag me all the way to the lights on her own if we did that. She's even shorter than Engineer and that's saying something, just leaning on her before had been pretty uncomfortable on account of the height difference.

I nearly fell over when I got up again, but I didn't, and we kept walking. It got to the point where I was sucking in every breath between my teeth, and I had to keep my eyes shut because watching the world going up and down was making me nauseous. All I wanted to do was lie down and not move, but when I did manage to look around now and then I could tell that the lights had gotten closer.

My head was getting fuzzy, and pretty soon the only thing keeping me awake was the godawful jolts of pain snapping at me with each step. I could actually feel the venom moving up through my leg, probably slower than it would have been without the tourniquet but faster than if I hadn't been moving any.

A ways up further—I don't know how far a ways because I was feeling pretty lucky that I could still stand up at all—and those lights had gotten a lot bigger. It was still too dark to do much more than be able to see that they were attached to buildings, and I still didn't have no idea if we were heading toward respawn or away from it.

Let me tell you about respawn. You know about me any, you know about respawn, but a thing like that it's got rules. You gotta be tagged in each and every time you show up for a mission and you gotta do it the minute you step foot on BLU's territory. Miss P was damn smart getting here ahead of us and patching in, because I kid you not I have tagged into respawn and got blown up two minutes later seeing as how I work with a crew of nutjobs. They're my team, I love the guys, but they're all psychos.

Miss P told us once the range extends a little outside the bases just to be safe, but far as I know ain't none of us ever tested it. It can go a long ways but they keep it mostly confined to where we fight, something to do with radio waves interfering with stuff, I dunno, ask Engie. Point is, if I wanted to come back from this snake bite I had to do my dying once I was on the base and not any sooner. And it wasn't looking like that was in my future.

"How—how long do rattlesnakes take to kill a guy?" I asked eventually, casual, like I didn't have no stake in the answer. "I mean in the pictures and all them Westerns and that, usually the guy don't actually get bit, they just stick the snake in there to make things tenser, y'know?"

Under my arm, and I was leaning awfully heavy on Miss P right now but she wasn't complaining none so she must've been stronger than I was giving her credit for and I was giving her plenty credit already, under my arm I heard her mumble something. "You're uh, you're gonna hafta speak up."

"I don't know," she said. Her voice was kind of rankled up, like a tangle of thread. I knew that voice, it was the same voice my ma used whenever one of us kids got hurt bad enough we had to call somebody. "I don't know much about snakes. I think I've read that they don't always inject all their venom, but that's it, really. I'm not much use here ... I don't even know if I treated the bite right."

"Oh," I said. I had some other things to say but just saying the little bit I had had taken the wind right out of me, so the words just stayed inside and banged around my chest instead. Things like "well shit" and "don't think you could kiss it better for me, couldya?" and "I sorta thought you knew everything."

Some of them got out in the end, though. I wasn't really expecting them when they came out of my mouth. "Well, I'm real glad you're here anyway."

"I wou—"

"Naw hold on, hold on, I mean that, okay? I gotta get dragged through the desert in the middle of the night with a snake bite, you're the lady I'd pick to be doin' the draggin', first choice, every time."

It was still dark as ever but when I looked at her after I said that, God's honest, she was smiling a little bit. "Thank you, Scout."

Then I tripped over a rock and knocked us both the hell over into the dirt.

* * *

We kept going. What else could we do?

Look, I'm no marathon runner. I hate waiting, I hate doing things slow, I freakin sprint for a living. But between my leg and the dark and us going along careful as we could so as not to piss off no more snakes or walk into any cactuses or anything, it took us three hours, easy, to reach those lights.

I was just about done by then. I thought I could feel the muscles and things in my leg going bad, like it was rotting, and the inside of my cleat was all sticky-wet with blood because I guess the venom had kept the punctures from clotting. I was awful glad it was dark, now, because I kept thinking about what Heavy's bite had looked like and Heavy's a lot bigger than I am, he had a lot more that venom'd had to work through and his leg had still looked like it belonged to a corpse.

Now regularly I got the constitution of about three or four bulls, maybe even seven, let's get that straight first. But like I said I ain't no marathon runner and anyway I never heard of no marathon runner what ran on a poisoned leg, so by the time we got to the first of the lights—just a big pole with a bulb mounted on it—I was pretty much dead weight on Miss P's shoulder. She had to shake me to get me to listen to what she was saying. "Scout—Scout, we're here. We made it."

"Hnumn. Wha?"

"We made it back, we're back at BLU. Right up ahead, I can see the front door, it's not even fifty yards away. Thank God." She squeezed my arm. "You're going to be fine, okay?"

"Oh, thas. Yeah. Thas great, Miss Pauling."

The ground got closer and next thing I knew I was cold. Miss P had slid me off her shoulder up by to a rock next to a whole bunch of shrubby brushes, right under the pole. "I'm going to get Medic, alright? I'll be right back. Try not to fall asleep."

"Okay," I said, but it came out closer to a "nn'khay," all slurred. I was a little too far gone for relief by then. Passing out sounded like a swell idea. As Miss P turned and started sprinting toward the base I was just about to do that, too, when the bushes beside me started to shake.

Something exploded out of the undergrowth, shooting off at an angle toward Miss P's back. The shock smacked me right out of my stupor and at first all I saw was a tan blur. I didn't even know what it was before I started kicking up a racket. I don't even remember what I was saying, I was just screaming my head off for her to look out.

Miss P turned just as the cougar pounced.

I heard a shriek and a thump, but I couldn't see anything because I'd tried to get to my feet and put all my weight on my bit leg, blacked my sight right out. I hit the dirt and my vision came back in time for me to see Miss P staggering, holding her side. The cougar skidded to a stop in the dirt and rounded on her.

As cougars go it wasn't huge—I've seen some real monsters in my time in the Badlands but this wasn't one of those. I could see one or two of its ribs, even, and there was no way it was full-grown. But it was still a cougar, and I could see how big the rips it had made in Miss P's shirt were, and as I watched it dropped down into a crouch, fixated on Miss P.

Miss P pulled her hand off her side and the blood looked horrible bright. The cougar folded its ears back, and Miss P pulled my bag off her shoulder and brought out my bat.

You know how when something real bad is about to happen, something you can't do nothing about, everything seems to go too slow? It's like the universe is laughing at you for not being able to stop it. That's what happened when the cougar attacked again. It leapt at her and I could just about count every one of its whiskers as it did, and Miss P planted her feet in the dirt, she was muttering something at it, _come on, try me_ and—

swung—

A godawful crack split the air as the bat caught it in the face. Its jump was screwed up, but it still managed to smack into Miss P enough to throw her to the dirt. It yowled and oh God its teeth were huge, I didn't know cats could have teeth that size. It brought its head down with that big mouth wide open, it was going straight for her throat.

And there was me, lying in the dirt like a goddamn idiot who'd got his goddamn leg bit by a goddamn rattlesnake and couldn't do a thing to help her.

Well, there was one thing.

I pushed myself up to my knees and that still hurt like a bitch, but after a panicky second or two of searching my hand closed around a rock. It was just about the size of a baseball, and you don't play baseball for your whole life growing up without learning how to pitch._"HEY!"_

The cougar's ears pricked as I screamed at it, just a little, and I saw it look at me. Its jaws were clear around Miss P's wrist, she'd put up one between her neck and the cat, but it wasn't doing her much good. It kept biting at her face and throat even as it looked at me.

My form was awful, and if they'd been any further away from me than they were I would have been shit out of luck, but as it was I nailed that bastard right in the eye.

It shrieked and started backing off, shaking its head. Just like that Miss P was up again, I ain't got a clue how neither because from the neck down she was just blood and more blood, but she took my bat and she slammed it right into the cougar's skull. The cat reeled and she hit it again, and one more time for good measure, and then the cougar was out of reach. The cat stopped a couple of feet away, staring at Miss P like it couldn't believe it just got its ass beat by a little thing like her. One of its eyes was screwed up closed and there was an unreal amount of blood on its face, and it was walking funny. It just stood there a couple seconds more, panting—some of its teeth were gone thanks to the bat—and then I guess it decided Miss P wasn't worth the trouble because it darted off toward the desert, disappearing in the dark. The second it did Miss P was flat out on the ground again.

I still couldn't put any weight on my bad leg without falling over, but adrenaline is a hell of a thing. I couldn't even feel the snake bite anymore, and I was up on my feet and next to her the minute the cat was gone. Lot of help I was now. "Jesus. Oh, fuckin' Christ, Miss Pauling, Christ."

It's not like blood and gore and me ain't familiar with each other. We been bedmates for a long time, and more than ever now there's eighteen of us mowing each other down every day. But looking down at her, just then, I felt like crying. I didn't, I don't ever cry, but it was that awful. The cougar had chewed up her face something terrible, and now I was up close I couldn't figure out how the hell she'd swung the bat with both hands because the wrist that had been in its mouth didn't look like it should have been attached to her still. Where it had hit her in the side there was just this big dark spot on her shirt. She had this huge hole in her throat, too, just gushing blood, but somehow she still had her glasses on.

"Wh—oh, Scout," she mumbled as I tried to figure out what the flying fuck to do. "Is it … did it leave? Are you okay?"

"Y, yeah, yeah you scared it off, me I'm fine, you broke its frickin' face, you did it." I drew in a breath that was a hell of a lot more shaky than I wanted it to be. "Don't, don't talk alright, Miss Pauling, don't say nothin', we gotta …"

She wasn't saying no more. By the time I figured out the thing had bitten into an artery, she wasn't breathing no more, either.

I sat there like a fucking idiot for I don't even know how long, waiting for her to move, or for the cat to return, I don't know. It took some bird flying up out of the bushes up ahead, squawking, to bring me back. I looked up at it, following it until it disappeared into the black sky. As I brought my gaze back down it hit a familiar blue-and-yellow logo, painted in ten-foot letters on the buildings a couple dozen yards ahead. _BLU. _I stared at it for thirty seconds before I remembered what it was, and meant.

It meant we were back at the base. That was right, that was what Miss P had been doing when the cat attacked her, she had been going to get Medic. For me.

We were back at the base.

We were back at the base and we were just outside it and respawn—

—I had no idea how far outside the base respawn went. I just had to hope it was close enough.

I don't remember how I got to the base, honestly. One minute I was holding Miss P's good hand and the next I was practically falling down the stairs that lead into Hightower, yelling my head off for someone to help me get to respawn. My bit leg was done being ignored, and by the time I got into the base I was back to not being able to walk.

I got lucky. Sniper and Demo were sitting around on this almost deck sort of thing real near the entrance. Demo saw me first. "Wh—_bloody_ hell, lad, your leg—"

"I know about my fuckin' leg and I don't fuckin' care, I gotta, you guys gotta get me to respawn I, Miss Pauling she's—"

"God, is that a snake bite? Where the bloomin' hell have you been? I'll get Medic."

"_I don't need Medic, I needta get to respawn—"_

The next ten minutes was torture. No one would freakin listen to me, even though they kept asking if I knew where Miss P was. Eventually Engineer went and looked outside, I guess, and came back talking about a cougar prowling around, and a lot of blood. By then, though, they'd got me stuck on the medigun for long enough that my leg had shrunk most of the way back to its regular size. The minute Soldier stopped holding me down I got the hell out of there.

I think some of them tried to follow me, but respawn is way on the other end of the base from the infirmary. My leg still hurt like hell, but I could run on it, and run is what I did, and no one on the team has nothing on me when it comes to running.

I turned a corner and there they were, those big grated doors outside the lockers. I was going so fast I slammed into them before the motion sensors detected me. I stumbled inside, praying to anyone who'd listen that I was gonna get in the respawn room and Miss Pauling would be in there and she'd be just fine.

The doors slid open into the white tiled room that every respawn uses. And it was perfectly white, everywhere. No one was in there.

For a couple seconds I stood there, waiting. Respawn's not instant, it takes at least five minutes most times and as long as fifteen if it's feeling cranky. But the team had held me up for ten already, and that was after I'd been outside a while with the body.

Miss Pauling didn't appear.

Eventually I turned around and left.

The grated doors slid open in front of me. I was limping again, even though my leg didn't hurt near as much. At Hightower respawn's in a pretty long hallway, long enough that by the time I got to the end of it I had to lean against the wall and try and catch my breath. I shut my eyes and tried not to think about Miss P with the cougar's teeth around her neck.

Instead I wound up thinking about how she'd spent the last couple hours of her life dragging my sorry ass through a desert because I was too hurt to walk, and how honestly it was probably me running my mouth what made her take the wrong turn in the first place. I thought about how I'd probably have one literal foot in the grave if she'd decided I was too much of a pain to deal with, and how that didn't ever even seem to cross her mind. She didn't even know me all that well, I was just that guy that works for her and makes passes at her all the damn time, but she pulled me through that desert all the same.

I thought about how smart, pretty, _kind_ Miss Pauling was dead because of me.

Seemed like I stood there a long time. My head was killing me and I was starving but I couldn't've eaten nothing even if it was Christmas dinner, it was that bad. Once I heard that scream, just like a woman's, far away, the cougar again. I was gonna tear up the desert, I decided. I would hunt that cougar down if it was the last thing I did.

That is what I did. I went right back to respawn and grabbed my scattergun and my extra bag and my strongest bat, and I slug it all over my shoulder and stormed outside. The air seemed colder after being inside a while, and there was a huge bloody spot on the ground still—but her body was gone.

I saw red. I saw _crimson_, forget the RED team they were gonna look like peaches after that, that fucking cat had come back and it had dragged her off into the wild—

"Scout?"

I yelled, grabbing for my gun as I turned. I saw cute glasses and a purple shirt, no rips, no blood. Miss P, whole and healthy, drew some hair that had fallen out of her bun back behind her ear and looked me over. "Oh, thank God, I couldn't find you, I thought something had—I went outside and there was so much blood—"

The gun fell to the ground. I had wrapped her into a tight, tight hug before I even knew what I was doing.

* * *

When I asked Engineer later, we went outside the base and he did some measuring and he said if Miss P had been another ten feet in the opposite direction she'd still be cat food. I thought about that, and I thought about a lot of other things, and then I asked her out to dinner. I'd done that plenty of times, but looking back on all of them compared to this time none of them had been that serious, really. This one was serious. Maybe that's why she said yes this time.

We got pizza and milkshakes and I told her about the cougar, told her the whole thing. Respawn messes with your memory a little, small price to pay for immortality really, and not a bad perk when it means most of the time you don't remember the stuff that killed you. Saves on nightmares. Either way she didn't remember the cougar at all. She didn't believe me when I said she'd beaten it off with a baseball bat, either, but I knew what had gone down so I didn't argue it none.

So I just gave her my maraschino cherry, and we agreed to stay out of mineshafts from now on, and at the end of the night I picked one of those pretty spring Badlands flowers and gave it to her. She smiled when I did that, and tucked it behind her ear, and said thank you.

I think I'd quit my job and just spend all day picking flowers for her if it'd keep her smiling.


End file.
